


Like Real People Do

by zapples



Category: Glass (2019), Split (2016)
Genre: Death, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Split, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, casey is conflicted, complies totally with split canon but fuck glass canon, the most unrealistic thing about glass was the successful foster system
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-03-14
Packaged: 2019-10-22 08:52:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17659649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zapples/pseuds/zapples
Summary: Casey is a master of unhealthy coping mechanisms





	1. I Have Thought of Him

She didn’t know why she thought it would be that easy. In retrospect, Casey thought, she should have known better. Emboldened by surviving her encounter with the Beast, she had let herself believe that the rest of the problems in her life could be solved with the same simple defiance. Fueled by adrenaline, she imagined Uncle John being thrown in the back of a cruiser, shouting over his miranda rights, his rough chubby hands flexing against the pain of too-tight cuffs. She imagined him being dragged out of her life with finality, now that she was bold and brave and battle-hardened. Somehow she thought it would make a difference.

Casey sighed and shoved her hands in her pockets, kicking pebbles as she walked. Winter was coming on strong now, and the winds whipping past stung like a slap against her cheeks and nose. She turned her face downward and hunkered into her shoulders, looking up only to check the street signs here and there and make sure she was headed the right way. 

She told herself she just needed to get away, and in some ways it was true. She hated the group home they’d dumped her in. Foster families willing to take in teenagers were few and far between in even the best circumstances, and no one wanted to deal with one who had both a history of abuse and Casey’s record of constant delinquency. Plus, she’d age out in a few months, so she knew she wasn’t listed as an urgent case. She got the feeling her case worker, a brusque woman in her sixties who barely looked her in the eye and spoke in a voice laced with cigarettes and disinterest, wasn’t exactly working overtime to make sure Casey was comfortable. If anything, she felt as though they saw her as a problem that, if they dragged their feet a little, might just go away on its own. The family she was placed with clearly just wanted an extra check in the mail every month, and already had their hands full with a house full of other children. They eyed Casey with a wary distrust and enforced a strict set of household rules to keep her from stealing or acting out, and she found it easier to just avoid going home. Luckily they didn’t seem to mind, so long as she didn’t bring anyone or anything questionable back with her. 

Then there were the phone calls. The court date was set for four long months away, and Uncle John was relentless in his attempts to reach her. _‘Just take it back, Casey bear,’_ he would slur, voice thick with the bottom-shelf whiskey he had grown to love, _‘just tell them it was all a joke. Tell them I’d never..you know I’d never hurt you.’_ He swung like a pendulum, from the rotten dulcet honey of promises to change, to pitiful begging through thin tears, sucking back snot and hacking coughs, to his indignant fury and empty threats. As though she were still a child young enough to be cowed by his anger. She supposed in his perfect world she was.

But getting away from the house wasn’t the reason she took this particular walk, no matter how much she tried to convince herself it was. She needed to come back here. Needed to see it, again and again, like a compulsion she couldn’t shake. It tapped at the walls of her brain, prodding at the edges of all her thoughts like a song stuck in her head. So she kept coming.

It was nearly dark when she made it there, the sky like a chalkboard with thick winter clouds obscuring all but a dusting of cold, faraway stars. Casey edged her way around the perimeter of the fence until she found a spot to climb. The zoo was eerie after closing, pathways marked with colorful signs for a bustling public, now abandoned by even the vets and staff. It had taken a while, at first, to find the way back. She had to retrace her steps to find the door she had stumbled out of that day, out of the sodium-lit basement and into the blinding light, stinking of blood and gunsmoke, struck silent by a vision of a terrible god. But she had found it, and even though the detectives had locked it beyond any hope of breaching, laying her hand on the cold green door was (almost) enough.

She didn’t know what she expected to find. The door was always locked, and she wasn’t sure she’d want to climb down those stairs again even if it weren’t. Her memory of the place below was piecemeal, cobbled together in an unfinished map of terrible snapshots, surreal and warped with fear. It seemed labyrinthine in her mind’s eye, although she knew it must be small and remote for him to have hidden so long. Casey couldn’t help but wonder what was left down there. Whether the detectives left behind the concrete stains where Claire was found, strands of her golden hair caught in the cracks in the floor where she was savaged; whether Kevin’s computer had been wiped of videos, the desperate attempts by so many facets of him to anchor themselves to the world. She wondered if there was still a jar of mayonnaise open on the counter, congealed and flystruck under the humming kitchen lights, or whether Hedwig’s hamster still lingered, thirsty and starving, waiting for his boy to return to care for him, running weakly on his wheel toward a paper window that would never get closer and forever be shut. 

Sometimes she thought he might be watching her. She lowered herself to the ground in front of the door, crossing her legs and letting the cold road seep into her thin, worn jeans, and looked at the stars. They hadn’t caught him, or her, or them yet, despite a determined uptick in police surveillance citywide. The story hadn’t broken as wide as she thought it would, she assumed because it would mean admitting he was still at large. No real warnings had been given on the news beyond a sketch artist’s best attempt and a vague request for tips if he’s spotted. Casey remembered seeing the drawing on air and thinking to herself how impossible it would be to recognize one alter from looking at another. They all had the same face, but held themselves so differently it was like looking at a wholly new person. The composite they had managed looked like none of them, but still turned her stomach in a way that she didn’t know how to explain. 

No artist could capture the ice in Dennis’ stare, or the sly edge of Patricia’s smile. No one could translate the fragile hope in Hedwig’s eyes, the frayed threads of Jade’s desperation. No one could possibly know how the Beast had looked at her. Looked _in_ her. _Through_ her. He looked at her with a hunger different than her uncle or the the boys that slipped her notes about her wide brown eyes, like he would taste her very soul, consume the core of her like a heady wine. He looked at her with acceptance, with pride, not like her father or the social workers who called her brave for taking the stand, patting her cold hands with pitying smiles. He saw something in her, drawn to her survival by the smell of her fear and the set of her shoulders, romanticising it in a way that felt so much more genuine than the glances in the hallway, the hushed voices saying ‘did you hear’, whispering Claire and Marcia’s name as she went by like a ward against the curse of her.  
He looked at her like he knew her. She wasn’t used to that.

He was still out there, somewhere. He was free and unfettered with that bloodshot thing inside him and he could go wherever he wanted while she still felt as tied to this place, as trapped in that moment of eye contact, as she had been behind the iron bars. Casey wasn’t sure if she was afraid, or glad, or angry, or sad.. Maybe all of them at once. She hoped Kevin had the light again, that he could find some way to be alright. She wanted to know that no one else would end up stripped and crying, scrubbed clean and marked with a sprig of baby’s breath, made pure in the stomach of a madman. She wanted to look in those red eyes again and feel precious and holy and strong again. The last was the one she couldn’t face, and the one she suspected brought her here so many nights, urged her to turn her back to the trees and tempt fate. The adrenaline surge was intoxicating, choosing to be vulnerable, taking her fear in her own hands and squeezing it to see what truth it bled out of her. 

She closed her eyes, waiting with her face toward the sky and her breathing shallow and ragged in her chest. Minutes passed. Maybe he was here, prowling as silent as a panther in the shadows as the Beast or still and appraising like a stone tower in a button-down and glasses. Maybe it was Kevin, watching her with painful confusion, hand outstretched. Maybe, she thought, zoo security would finally catch her, stop her from performing this masochistic experiment ever again and free her from ever having to know what she wanted. Maybe that would be a mercy.

Eventually, she opened her eyes. Nothing. She gathered the courage to turn behind her, and the zoo and the fence beyond were still empty. She remained unseen, her private ritual ending with no answers beyond the tremble in her clenched hands and the lonesome howling of the winter wind. She stood and started the long walk home, and when she let out the breath she had been holding, the sigh might have either been relief or disappointment. There was no one but her to know.


	2. Let's Be Animals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> blood is thicker than water, and it leaves worse stains

It was still dark when the phone rang. Casey fumbled for it, hurriedly silencing the ringer and squinting against the sudden brightness of the screen. The caller ID read ‘John’. Her shoulders tensed. She hesitated, then answered.

“Hello?”

“Casey. Please don’t hang up.” He sounded tired and his voice was heavy, but for once it was sober.

“It’s six in the morning,” she said flatly. “What do you want.”

“Casey, please,” he started, and she could hear him parsing his words carefully. “I just want to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she replied, swallowing hard. She tried to keep her voice even, calm and emotionless. She imagined herself as a stone wall. Immovable, impassable, unbreakable. She had to be firm.

“...Listen,” he said, audibly slumping against something. “I’m going away, Casey. You know that. They’re going to put me away for a long time.”

“Good,” she said, and immediately regretted how quickly she had spoken, how venemous it sounded. Don’t let him hear your feelings, she reminded herself. Be still.

“I know you hate me, Casey bear, I do. But listen. There’s still...there’s still so many things I have to tell you.” His voice wavered on the line, whuffing a pathetic, choked-up breath. “Stories about your dad, things I should have...I know you’ll never wanna talk to me after they take me in, but I owe you that. I have some of his things and I don’t know where they’re gonna go or what will happen to them...I want you to have them. Please. Just let me give them to you. While I can.”

Casey’s face twisted in the dark. She put a hand over her mouth and quieted her breathing so it wouldn’t be shaky when she spoke.

“I don’t want to see you. I’m not _supposed_ to see you.”

“Please,” he entreated.

There was silence for a long moment as she thought.

“...I’ll give you twenty minutes. That’s _it_.”

The sigh of joyous relief that whooshed out of him was so obscene Casey cringed away from her phone.

“God, thank you, Casey, thank you so m-”

She hung up.

\--

Her foster mother was the early riser of the household, preparing eggs as the sun began to rise over the edges of the buildings and glint through their kitchen window. She turned as Casey trotted down the stairs, looking her over with curious suspicion.

“You’re up early,” she commented. “School isn’t for another hour. Where are you going?”

“I need to do my Econ homework,” Casey said. Mrs. Wheaten put a hand on her hip, staring Casey down with cold disappointment.

“You told me you’d finished all your work last night.” 

“I lied.” Casey shrugged, masking her nerves with practiced apathy. She’d scored detention enough times for herself to have mastered the nonchalant half-eyeroll that took the piss right out of authority figures. Mrs. Wheaten scowled.

“Fine. Go then.” She waved Casey off with a dismissive hand that might have stung if either of them cared at all about one another. Casey slipped out the door without another word, hopped on her bike, and began the trek into the low-end suburbs where her Uncle awaited her.

\--

Casey put down her foot brake in his driveway at 7:15, and it took five more minutes for her to reach the front door. Every step felt wrong. She looked up at the lamp over the porch, the metal lawn chair by the door with the Folgers can of cigarette butts, the filthy chipping fake gold filigree around the old doorbell. The house she had avoided for years, the house that after every detention and procrastination she had defeatedly returned to. She couldn’t help but feel like returning now was a failure of some kind. No one was forcing her here. She was just weak.

Her stomach churned, and she balled her hands into fists and pushed her fingernails into her palm. The old slurry of self-hating thoughts came rushing back to her. Could she really be called back to this hell like a dog if John just pestered her enough? Was that the extent of her backbone? She ground her teeth. Or would it have been cowardly _not_ to come, a disrespect to her father’s memory? Wasn’t having something left of him to hold, some story of his life she never knew worth having to see John’s yellowing face? Wasn’t she strong enough for that?  
Casey shook her head, clearing her thoughts. It was pointless to go back and forth. She was here, she was torturing herself for no reason. She was wasting time. Get in, hear what he has to say, get your father’s things and get out again. She repeated it to herself like a mantra, filling her lungs with a deep, emboldening breath. _Get in, get the stuff, get out. Get in, get the stuff, get out._

She shut her eyes tight, breathed out, placed her hand on the knob, and opened the door.

He was already drunk.

Casey chided herself the moment she stepped over the threshold. She could see the bottle on the table, none but two fingers left in the bottom of brown, pungent liquor. John was sitting at the dining table, two lonely wooden chairs catty-corner in the bare kitchenette. She should have expected this, she thought. But she didn’t, and now she was here.

“Casey!” He gushed, standing too fast. His tall, wide frame swayed like a ship’s mast and he had to steady himself on the listing table. He started to take a step toward her, arms wide for a hug, but even drunkenly thought better of it and waved her toward the empty seat instead.

“You’re drunk,” she seethed. “I thought you were going to tell me about Dad.”

“I am, I am, I’m..I’m sorry, I just..heh.” John dropped heavily back into his seat and gestured more enthusiastically toward her chair. “I didn’t know what it would be like to see you again, Casey bear, I just had to..to calm my nerves a little. ‘S okay. ‘S okay. C’mere.”

Casey frowned, picking her way carefully through the room as though the ghosts of her time here might bite at her ankles like rats. She sat gingerly on the edge of the chair and tried to look at him with as little expression as possible, but it was hard to hide her disgust and disappointment.

John looked awful. He hadn’t shaved, his stubble crept unevenly over his cheeks and neck. He looked jaundiced and waxy, his nose and cheeks splotchy and red. He looked like he had aged ten years in one. He opened his mouth and rancid, astringent whiskey breath settled on Casey’s face like a film.

“I knew you’d come back, Casey bear.”

“Don’t call me that.” She scowled, leaning physically away. “Where are my dad’s things?” She had given up on a cohesive story out of him. She would settle for the items and get out of here.

John gestured with his thumb. “Upstairs. I got ‘em..I got ‘em laid out. D’you want to hear about him though? D’you want..you want a story?” 

Casey hesitated, then shook her head. “No thanks. I’m gonna go look.”

She pushed her chair away from the table, grateful for a chance to distance herself, and climbed the creaking stairs. There was only one door open. She frowned at it, then swung it wide and stepped in. 

There was a disappointingly small pile on the bed. A pocketknife. A framed photo of herself as a child. A flask with her father’s initials on it. Nothing special. Nothing sentimental. Casey realized all at once what a thin, stupid ploy it had been to get her here. He just wanted to see her and he knew she would never let him plead his case in person. She picked up the photo, dropped it again, and inspected the pocket knife. She opened the small main blade. It was cheap and insignificant. It might not have even been her father’s. She squeezed the handle, holding back furious tears. She felt like an idiot.

“Casey bear.”

Casey whirled, seeing the looming bulk of her uncle shadowed at the top of the stairs, filling the view through the doorway. With tears blurring her vision it might have been a bear. She stalked toward him.

“ _Move_ ,” she snarled. “I’m _done_.”

“Shh,” he slurred, holding out his arms in a sick attempt at comfort. “It’s okay. Lemme give you a hug. We’re family, Casey, you know you always come back to family. I love you, honey, you know that.”

Casey recoiled, violently shaking her head. “Let me go. I’m leaving. I don’t wanna be here.”

“Yes you do,” John replied, and something in his voice grew darker. “We both know you do. Come here.” He took a step forward, his arms outstretched for her.

“ _NO!_ ” Casey shouted, and shoved her hands into him, pushing him away.

For a brief second, the world stood still for her. The pocketknife she was holding flashed in the stairwell light and thudded against Uncle John’s shirt. Startled, he lunged forward, his hands catching nothing, and his foot caught air above the stairs. She saw his fall in a series of snapshots, somehow separate from reality, and the crunch as he landed hung in the air like an echo.

Casey stared down at him, waiting for him to groan. To move from the unnatural position he lay in. To shout at her. Anything. In one brief and sickening minute she replayed a whole lifetime. Bedtime stories, campfire snacks. Stolen cigarettes. Checking for monsters under the bed. Becoming one himself. A whirling soup of conflicting emotions boomed like thunder and she could hear her heartbeat in her skull. She tasted salt and realized she’d bitten her tongue. He didn’t move. Slowly the smell rose up the stairs and Casey finally broke out of her frozen stupor, falling to her knees and retching. She clasped her head in her hands, her white-knuckled grip aching around the handle of the knife. She struggled to breathe, and heard her own horrified moan seep out of her mouth without being able to stop it. 

Finally she stood, trembling and shaking, and ran down the stairs rather than try to step over the last of her family at the bottom. She slammed the door behind her, jumping at the finality of the sound, threw herself onto her bike, and flew down the street.

\--

She rode until she physically couldn’t keep going. Her breath ragged, lungs burning, her legs seizing up beneath her. She finally pulled over at a bridge in the warehouse district, nearly falling off the bike onto the old metal railing. She pulled her knees up to her chest and wept.

There was nothing for her now. The rational thoughts that pushed through her screaming anxiety seemed to pile atop one another in a mountain of evidence against her. School will have already started. Her absence would be noted. Her foster family would be called. They would know she was lying. They would check her uncle’s house. They would find him dead. Pushed down the stairs with a slash in his chest, knife missing. She was done for. She would be jailed. She was unstable, they would blame her for everything. She had no more family. No friends. Her school record was laughable. Terrible grades. No chance. No future. Nothing to live for. 

Casey looked out at the cold gray water churning below the city and edged herself around the railing to the outside of the bridge. Why wait? Her chest heaved. She could sit there and wait for them to find her, go back into custody and let everything that was going to happen to her happen. Or this. She tried to take deep breaths. Tried to imagine the cold she’d feel, the sudden smack from this height, and then nothing. Her chilled fingers flexed against the bridge.

A small, scared voice chimed from behind her, lisping her name.

“Casey? What are you doing?”

Casey froze, holding her grip tightly on the fencing, and turned her head. Hedwig peered up at her from beneath the edge of a yellow hoodie, tugging a pair of headphones down from his ears. He frowned concernedly at her.

“H..Hedwig?” she asked. “I..”

“You shouldn’t do that,” he said. “You’re gonna fall.” He held out a hand. “Miss Patricia says I’m not supposed to talk to you if I see you. She says you could tell on us. You’re not gonna tell on us, right?”  
Casey had spent months asking herself if she would, weighing what she thought was purely hypothetical. Whether she would condemn Hedwig, and Kevin, and Jade, and all the rest. She realized without a single doubt the moment he asked her that she wouldn’t. 

“..No. I’m not going to tell on you.” She looked at his hand and looked away. Hedwig pulled it back and sat by her instead, the metal links of the bridge separating them. “I did something bad, Hedwig.” Casey said. “Something really bad. Now I can’t go home.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to jump off, though.” Hedwig said solemnly. Casey didn’t realize he understood what she was doing. “You’re still okay, you know? You don’t have to be scared. We all get in trouble sometimes.”

“This is _big_ trouble, Hedwig.” Casey sighed, settling her face against her knees. Her breath hitched and a fresh wave of sobs started to rise in her chest. “I just...I..”

“Hey.” He said softly, and his fingers wormed through the chain link to settle on her shoulder. “You’re not broken. You’re good.”

Casey let out a bitter laugh. “Of course I’m _broken_ , remember? That’s the whole reason the Beast let me go.”

Hedwig considered that a moment. “Yeah, but like. You’re not broken like a plate or somethin’. Like not good anymore. You’re broken like..like a glowstick.”

Casey looked up at him, at his eager, sad smile, and her face crumpled. Hedwig carefully stood, reached over the railing, and pulled Casey gently by the armpits. “Can I give you a hug?” he asked.

She nodded, rubbing her eyes with the heel of her hand as the tears spilled over, and he did.

“C’mon,” he said, guiding her back to the safety of the bridge. “I’ll show you where I live now. ..Can I ride your bike?”


	3. An Interlude

**1989**

“Kevin Wendell Crumb!”

Her voice boomed up the stairs. Kevin shrank further under his bed, counting the beats between her pounding footfalls on the stairs like the space between lightning and thunder, gauging the impending storm of his mother’s fury as she searched for him. He clapped a hand to his mouth, controlling his shuddering breath so as not to whimper aloud. Big boys didn’t cry. Big boys didn’t fall apart afraid when their mother was angry.

_But that isn’t my mother,_ he thought, squeezing himself against the slats below his mattress and trying to be silent and small. The woman bounding down the narrow hall like a predator on a trail was someone else, something that had taken root inside her, spread through her like veins or vines or tendrils, took hold and sharpened her tongue and darkened her eyes when she looked at him. More and more often these days it held her, and without his father's calm voice to soothe her and strong hands to hold her down it grew unchecked. The lonely wind that echoed through the house in Daddy’s absence spread her vicious flames and she became a forest fire, hungry for the small creatures daring to flee and taking their homes away.

Kevin squeezed his eyes shut and imagined the Good Mother, determined to hold that image safely in his mind even if the monster in his mama ate her up completely and she never came back. Cobbled together out of all the good things he knew his mother to be, all the things he wished she were, all the moments he had seen in public and on television of mothers and grandmothers loving their children that made his heart ache, the voice came forth out of the mist in his mind and laid a soft hand on his shoulder.

“You're right,” it cooed, saccharine sweet, wise, gentle. It spoke with authority. “That's not your mother. But she’s coming for you and you have to be ready, Kevin. You have to be a big boy. You have to be brave.”

Kevin’s shoulders shook. He ground his palm into his eyes, rubbing away tears and redness. 

“I can't,” he whispered, his tiny voice thick with shame and failure. “I'm scared. She's gonna hurt me…”

“Shhh..” Patricia murmured, uncoiling inside his head and ribs like a heavy quilt unfolding itself. “You can become a big boy, can't you? You'll have to do that. Pretend you're a very big brave boy and let him handle this. Then it will almost be as though it didn't happen to you, won’t it?”

Kevin nodded, confused but desperate. The footfalls were so close. He shut his eyes tight as he heard them stop outside the door and imagined himself a Very Big Boy, a grownup even, who was so brave and unafraid he felt nothing at all, not even pain. He was tough enough to bear it without making any of the noises mama hates. He would see messes better than the thing inside mama and keep them clean so they would be safe. 

Almost as soon as he had thought it, Kevin felt it trickling through his limbs and spine, knocking on some door inside him like it had been waiting permission to come out.

“Let it in, dear,” said Patricia, and Kevin knew she was always right and let the dark take over.

Dennis heard the door open and squinted to make out the shape of mama’s feet. She thumped to the floor like a corpse and glared below the bed with wild eyes, her hand clenched around a wire hanger. She shouted Kevin’s name, screamed he had made a mess. Dennis’ face was still and blank as she hauled him out and threw him over her knee. 

His blessed nearsightedness blurred out the world and all the disarray and chaos in it, the only clear spot a doll half-hidden under Kevin’s pillow. Kevin had found it on the playground, abandoned and forgotten in a puddle with her hair a dark tangle and her limbs askew and bent. Thank god his mother hadn't found it yet. 

Dennis stared at the doll, focused on it as the blows began to rain like lightning on his back. He stared at the thing, filthy and helpless and broken, and scowled. She was trash. Having her there was asking to be punished. He decided he would throw her out, before mama could find her. He stared at her blank face, her dog-chewed long bronze legs, her plastic arm reaching out to nothing, and felt something he had no words for, mixed up in the pain and the shame and the hate while Kevin’s mother cursed him and the wire snapped red lines across his narrow thighs. He stewed in it and waited. He would throw her out. He would clean this room beyond reproach. He had to.

Kevin’s mother dropped him on the bedspread, saying something reproachful Dennis didn't care to catch, and left. Later she would return with teary eyes and rock Kevin in a smothering grip, a different person, pathetic and sickening, moaning like a wounded beast about hurting her baby and sobbing broken promises to never again, never again. She always did.

“Now now,” Patricia whispered. “Not all at once. Come home.” Dennis frowned, feeling sick and claustrophobic in Kevin’s skinny six year old frame.

“Fine,” he muttered, and left.

Kevin awoke on his bedroom floor all at once, his back and legs aflame but his cheeks dry. He stood and sniffled, looking at himself in the mirror. It had been worse. He was okay. He looked around his room and snatched Jade from under his pillow, holding her close to his chest like a rosary. His little fingers smoothed her hair. Gingerly, he sat on the edge of his bed and quieted his breathing. Tomorrow it was school again. He'd be okay. He'd be okay.


End file.
